Fred Dretske

(1932 - 2013)

A certain dilemma is inherent in relational accounts of space and time. If any objects endure through change, then temporal elements other than relations are required to describe them. If, on the other hand, no objects endure through change, no permanent reference system is available in terms of which to define the "same place" at different times. An argument which, by exploiting this latter difficulty, attempts to show that "objects with some endurance through time" must be accepted as fundamental is examined and found inconclusive. A sketch is then given of an alternative scheme which does allow the relevant spatial comparisons, but which does not countenance the reidentification of particulars. The discussion is intended to show that the relationist can, as indeed he must, deny the second horn of this delemma.

Peter Baumann and Nicholas Shackel defend me against a serious criticism by Christoph Jäger. They argue that my account of information is consistent with my denial of closure for knowledge. Information isn’t closed under known entailment either. I think that, technically speaking, they are right. But the way they are right doesn’t help me much in my effort to answer the skeptic. I describe a way in which information, like knowledge, fails to be closed in a way that makes an information-based account of knowledge an effective tool in answering the skeptic.

The debate between externalists and internalists in epistemology can be viewed as a disagreement about whether there are epistemic rights without corresponding duties or obligations. Taking an epistemic right to believe P as an authorization to not only accept P as true but to use P as a positive reason for accepting other propositions, the debate is about whether there are unjustified justifiers. It is about whether there are propositions that provide for others what nothing need provide for them—viz., reasons for thinking them true.

Materialist explanations of cause and effect tend to embrace epiphenomenalism. Those who try to avoid epiphenomenalism tend to deny either the extrinsicness of meaning or the intrinsicness of causality. I argue that to deny one or the other is equally implausible. Rather, I prefer a different strategy: accept both premises, but deny that epiphenomenalism is necessarily the conclusion. This strategy is available because the premises do not imply the conclusion without the help of an additional premise—namely, that behavior explained by reasons is caused by the reasons that explain it—and this premise is false.

By examining the general conditions in which a structure could come to represent another state of affairs, it is argued that beliefs, a special class of representations, have their contents limited by the sort of information the system in which they occur can pick up and process. If a system — measuring instrument, animal or human being — cannot process information to the effect that something is Q, it cannot represent something as Q. From this it follows (for simple, ostensively acquired concepts at least) that if an organism has the concept Q, if it can believe that things are Q, then it is the kind of organism that has the information-processing capabilities for knowing that something is Q.

This collection of essays by eminent philosopher Fred Dretske brings together work on the theory of knowledge and philosophy of mind spanning thirty years. The two areas combine to lay the groundwork for a naturalistic philosophy of mind. The fifteen essays focus on perception, knowledge, and consciousness. Together, they show the interconnectedness of Dretske's work in epistemology and his more contemporary ideas on philosophy of mind, shedding light on the links which can be made between the two. The first section of the book argues the point that knowledge consists of beliefs with the right objective connection to facts; two essays discuss this conception of knowledge's implications for naturalism. The next section articulates a view of perception, attempting to distinguish conceptual states from phenomenal states. A naturalized philosophy of mind, and thus a naturalized epistemology, is articulated in the third section. This collection will be a valuable resource for a wide range of philosophers and their students, and will also be of interest to cognitive scientists, psychologists, and philosophers of biology.

We ordinarily speak of being able to see that there are people on the bus, Students in the class, And children playing in the street. If human beings are understood to be conscious entities, Then one of our ways of knowing that there are other conscious entities in the world besides ourselves is by seeing that there are. We also speak of seeing that he is angry, She is depressed, And so on. It is argued that this is, Indeed, One way of knowing that there are other minds (and, Hence, That the problem of other minds is not a special epistemological problem). What helps to obscure this fact is the confusion between visibility and knowability--The confusion between seeing his pain and seeing that he is in pain.